The invention relates generally to compounds comprising carbazole units that are bifunctional. The invention also relates to monomers comprising carbazole units and polymers, dendrimers, and hyper-branched materials derived therefrom.
Organic light emitting devices (OLEDs), which make use of thin film materials that emit light when subjected to a voltage bias, are expected to become an increasingly popular form of flat panel display technology. This is because OLEDs have a wide variety of potential applications, including cellphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), computer displays, informational displays in vehicles, television monitors, as well as light sources for general illumination. Due to their bright colors, wide viewing angle, compatibility with full motion video, broad temperature ranges, thin and conformable form factor, low power requirements and the potential for low cost manufacturing processes, OLEDs are seen as a future replacement technology for cathode ray tubes (CRTs) and liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Due to their high luminous efficiencies, OLEDs are seen as having the potential to replace incandescent, and perhaps even fluorescent, lamps for certain types of applications.
One approach to achieve full-color OLEDs includes energy transfer from host to emissive guest molecules. For this to be realized, the triplet energy state of the host has to be higher than the guest molecule. Carbazole derivatives have shown promise to perform well as host molecule in the presence of metal containing emissive guest molecules. Often used in this respect is poly(N-vinyl carbazole). However, quantum efficiencies of devices that use poly(N-vinyl carbazole) is still at the range of about 60 to 80%. Thus, there is a need in the art to develop OLEDs having device quantum efficiencies, while still maintaining the potential for the molecules to host red, green, and blue emissive complexes.